Bitfinex’s second move amounts to ~$67 million worth of Bitcoins, yet is still among top-5 richest wallets

2019-05-01

Bitfinex, a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc., withdrew more Bitcoin funds from its cold wallet. This was noted to be the second time the exchange withdrew BTC funds in just one week, with some speculating it to be a side-effect of the NY AG opening an investigation against the platform.

This movement was pointed out by a Reddit user, Kaburgadolmasi, who commented that around 12,879 in BTC were moved out of the exchange’s cold wallet. The transfer occurred on 29th April 2019, at 17:53 UTC, when these Bitcoins were valued at $67,726,400 [approx. $67 million]. Notably, this occurred three days after the first such instance, when the exchange withdrew $89,419,300 [approx. $89 million] on 26th April 2019, at 06:42 UTC.

“They paid a whopping $300 to make sure the transaction takes priority for this super heavy transaction.”

Nevertheless, Bitfinex continues to be on the top-10 richest Bitcoin addresses list, despite this transfer. According to Bitinfocharts, Bitfinex cold wallet was recorded to be on the fifth position with 89,404.757 BTC [approx. to $471 million].

Notably, the top-four positions were taken by other leading exchanges, with Bittrex placed in the first position as it controls BTC worth around $662 million. The other three exchanges were Bitstamp, Huobi, and Binance, with a total of 324,415 BTC [over $1 billion].

Source: Bitinfocharts

Cointastical, another Redditor, said,

“30,000 BTC withdrawn, and Bitfinex still has ~90,000. Bizarre that so many people …collectively with 90,000 BTC are willing to play chicken with what is very possible a Mack truck headed their way.”

Apart from this, the price of Bitcoin on Bitfinex continues to be significantly different from other exchanges, with the coin trading at a premium of around 4 percent on the platform. According to CoinMarketCap, at press time, Bitcoin on Bitfinex was trading at $5530.40, with a trading volume of around $45 million.

Redditfagggg, another user, said,

“I quit using that exchange after they tried to steal my bitcoins a few years ago. they froze my account and answered the tickets once every 2 weeks. persistence and luck paid off and i got my money back. 10/10 never recommend”